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Southern Illinois loses five to transfer, coach rips the decisions

Barry Hinson

AP

Southern Illinois lost two more transfers on Monday, as Jordan Caroline and Deion Lavender both announced they will be leaving the program.

Caroline, a freshman forward, averaged 9.2 points and 6.2 boards this season, getting named to the All-MVC freshman team. Lavender, a freshman guard, was a part-time starter that averaged 6.6 points.

SIU has now lost five players to transfers this offseason, with four of them coming from a six-man 2014 recruiting class.

Head coach Barry Hinson certainly was not happy about the decision.

“Certainly, I have had better days as a college basketball coach and I don’t mind telling you that I am incredibly saddened and disappointed with the decision of two of our student athletes to transfer from SIU,” Hinson said.

“I did not expect this nor did I see this coming, but I will tell you this, there is an epidemic of college basketball student-athletes transferring right now and it is a huge number. Twelve hundred transfers in the last 2 years which means 700 of those were last year. Certainly our university and our program are not immune to transfers and certainly we’ve just taken a bite out of it. I want our fans to know that we did everything we could do to keep these players here and it was their decision as of today that it was in their best interest to go and play somewhere else.”